Too many youngsters are condemned to “a life of soiled nappies and scummy baths, chaos and hunger, hopelessness and despair”

More children should be taken into care more quickly, Education Secretary Michael Gove said today.

Too many youngsters are condemned to “a life of soiled nappies and scummy baths, chaos and hunger, hopelessness and despair”, the Tory Cabinet minister said.

Mr Gove was speaking after two damning reports found that lessons had not been learned from the case of two brothers who tortured and sexually abused two other young boys in Edlington.

Children are still at risk in the area three years after the attack, two separate reports warned today.

Ofsted inspectors said that social workers from Doncaster Council were too slow to realise when “children and young people are at risk of real harm.”

Lord Carlile, who carried out a review in the wake of the brutal 2009 attack, also said that social workers should be ready to act sooner and there were lessons for the whole country,

The Education Secretary used a speech in London to strongly back the peer’s finds, saying that too many children were being left in “physical and moral squalor” with bad parents.

He promised more backing for social workers “who rescue children from homes where they are left in their own urine and faeces for days, left to forage for scraps of food and drink and denied warm, clean bedding and clothing”.

Mr Gove said in a speech in London: “The state is currently failing in its duty to keep our children safe.

“When we do intervene it is often too late. We do not learn properly from what went wrong to improve matters in the future.”

His review was sparked by the savage attack on boys aged 11 and nine by the brothers, who were then 10 and 11, in Edlington, South Yorkshire, three years ago.

The victims, who are uncle and nephew, were lured to a secluded spot and subjected them to 90 minutes of violence and sexual humiliation.

They were strangled, hit with bricks, made to eat nettles, stripped and forced to sexually abuse each other.

The older boy was seriously injured when a piece of ceramic sink was dropped on his head.

The attackers were locked up in 2010 for a minimum of five years and will be released at the end of their sentence only if the Parole Board believes they are no longer a danger to the public.